A tighter, more connected writing community.

Over the next few weeks and months expect to see new features and opportunities to share, workshop, and feature your own work on Daily Drafts & Dialogues. You’ll still see the posts you love, but more time will now be allocated toward writing and sharing the types of posts you enjoy reading most, as well as facilitating deeper and more meaningful connections with fellow Daily Drafts & Dialogues subscribers and community members.

I want you to feel like a valued reader and subscriber, because you are.

I love sharing daily posts, and will continue to do so, but really want to start connecting more with you, dear reader. The main thing to know is that Daily Drafts & Dialogues will now be focused more on you and the writing community we will continue to build together, though you can still expect to see the same types of posts you’re already used to reading.

Moving forward, I want posts to be better centered around what you like to read and engage with most, so expect to see more polls, feedback requests, and community notes embedded at the bottom of regularly scheduled posts.

I also want Daily Drafts & Dialogues to be so much more than just another routine Substack for writers. I want it to be a relevant daily literary companion that is geared toward open-minded and curious writers and readers, especially those who are constantly looking for opportunities to improve and practice their craft via drafts and dialogues, regardless of their skill level.

I also want to help facilitate deeper connections with fellow indie authors, creative writers, critical thinkers, and prolific readers who are interested in building an engaged and supportive network of open-minded and creative people who believe in the power of language and storytelling. One draft. One dialogue. One day at a time.

Subscribe now

Free subscribers will get access to:

• Daily Drafts & Dialogues posts, accessible for seven days until they’re auto archived to Paid

Free posts will include:

✔ Reflective Essays

✔ Creative Writing Pieces (Note: Some of these posts will include completed writing prompts.)

✔ Book Reviews

✔ Daily Drafters Features (NEW!)

✔ Community Notes (NEW!)

✔ Guest Posts (NEW!)

✔ Flash Fiction Friday Challenges (NEW!)

✔ Egalitarian Book Club notes and updates

• Regular discount opportunities for Daily Drafts & Dialogues paid perks and access

• Additional perks TBA

Subscribe now

Paid subscribers will get access to:

• The complete Daily Drafts & Dialogues Archive, which already includes over 500+ posts

• Daily Drafters writing community in Substack Chat (NEW!)

*LAUNCHES Monday, MAY 4th*

An online space where members like you will receive:

✔ Daily writing prompts and writing tips (only ~$0.17 per prompt!)

✔ BONUS writing prompts, in addition to daily prompts (NEW!)

✔ Weekly Drafters Dialogue Chat Threads (NEW!)

Every Friday there will be a chat thread dedicated to Daily Drafters community members who want to share their writing based on Daily Drafts & Dialogues writing prompts, offering valuable opportunities to receive feedback in a supportive remote writing workshop atmosphere. You’ll also have the opportunity to share other writing you’re working on that week.

✔ Opportunities to have your work featured, build your writing portfolio, and get recognition

✔ Additional perks TBA

• Exclusive Access to Daily Drafts & Dialogues Digest (NEW!)

A monthly web-only digest that will include:

✔ Daily Drafters Community Spotlight Features and Featured Work

✔ Monthly and quarterly writing challenges

These will be a little more challenging to complete than daily prompts, for those who want to take their writing to the next level. Writers who are looking for a leg up on their next writing project or want to work on something they can add to their professional writing portfolios will also be interested in these challenges.

✔ Previous Month’s Daily Drafters Writing Prompt Roundup

You’ll have a month’s worth of writing prompts in one spot every month. This section will also include featured community members’ completed prompts from the previous month.

Switch to Paid before the first issue drops on JUNE 1!

Subscribe now

I’m looking forward to the opportunities these new and improved subscriber perks will bring! And I can’t wait to connect more. Let’s work together to make Daily Drafts & Dialogues the writing community you need and deserve.

P.S. to those of you who like to be first: Message me after you switch to Paid by this Friday, May 1, 2026, to receive your first 30 days free, and to become a Founding Daily Drafters Member.

Note that Founding Members of the new Daily Drafters writing community will be entered into a randomized drawing to receive free lifetime access, twice if you get a friend to join with you! Founding Members will also receive additional perks in the future, so stick around to learn more about those.

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

Share

There’s this coffee mug I like to use that has the phrase “The road to success is under construction.” on it in simple bold type.

I appreciate thinking about this phrase as I drink my morning coffee and write because it reminds me to keep thinking of writing as a journey I get the privilege to go on and enjoy building day by day and word by word, not as a one-time destination (an award or fleeting moment of recognition) or a one-time deliverable (an article, short story, novel, etc.). Yes, I am well aware how hokey and clichéd this sounds, but that doesn’t make it any less true, so bear with me for a minute.

Each time I read ‘“The road to success is under construction.”, I wind up asking myself things like: “When will you actually feel ‘successful’ as a writer? When will this road under construction ever end… if you want it to ever end? And is how you’re constructing this road a chore, joyful, meaningful, or something else?” And so on. Eventually, however, when the answers to those questions begin to seem too hazy or overwhelming, which they usually do, I ask myself one crucial follow-up question:

“What can you do today to feel ‘successful’ as a writer?” To which the answer is always simple: “Today, you will be a ‘successful’ writer as long as you write something, anything, even if it’s only one sentence.” Which is part of the story behind how Daily Drafts & Dialogues came to be.

I know a lot of writers will say that you don’t need to write every single day to be considered a writer or to become a ‘successful’ writer. And I agree with them. Whole-heartedly. Full stop. You don’t need to write every single day to consider yourself a writer or to become a successful one. But…

(Yes, of course there’s a ‘but’. I did call this publication DAILY Drafts & Dialogues after all.)

I know how I feel on those days I don’t write, as well as all the self-doubt and confusion that follows them. And how it feels to come back to a blank page after a few days or months away from writing and feel… well, blank, or overwhelmed, or worse, underwhelmed. And I know how distractible I am when I can’t reach a flow state while writing because I’ve neglected my daily writing habit for too long, replacing it with inconsistent writing spurts mixed with too much time on social media instead. I could keep going, but I’m pretty sure you’ve also experienced these feelings at some point, or glimmers of them anyway, and that I don’t need to elaborate any further than that.

Essentially, I keep a daily writing habit and write every single day because I like feeling focused enough to get lost in the flow of writing when I sit down to write, most times I sit down to write. Of course some days are easier than others. But I know for a fact that my harder days are more frequent if I don’t write every day. And I still remember how previous writing lapses made me doubt my writing and writing process and if I’d ever be a ‘successful’ writer. Sure, some days I write thousands of words while others I write only dozens. But most days (as in nine out of ten days on average) I write a number of words in between those two extremes (anywhere between 800 and 1,500). And, this is important, I actually enjoy writing when I’m ready to write each time I sit down to write, thanks to my daily writing routine.

I’ve written about the benefits of keeping a daily writing routine before in 5 Major Benefits of Keeping a Daily Writing Routine, which include being able to maintain a strong writing momentum and avoid writer’s block, reach achievable writing goals, enjoy consistent creativity, and have more enjoyable writing sessions. I will also add that maintaining a daily writing routine takes a lot of pressure off feeling like you need to deliver perfect, world-changing sentences each time you sit down to write, as well. When you write every day, you’ll feel less stress on days you only end up writing one paragraph you know will be deleted the next day, for instance, precisely because you know you’ll get back to writing the next day.

I would NEVER tell someone who doesn’t write every day that they aren’t a writer, or that they’re not serious about being a ‘successful’ writer. But I will tell them all the ways keeping a daily writing routine has benefited me and my writing, and how it’s benefited others. I would also share with them some of the following advice:

“You can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.” — Jodi Picoult.

“Exercise the writing muscle every day, even if it is only a letter, notes, a title list, a character sketch, a journal entry. Writers are like dancers, like athletes. Without that exercise, the muscles seize up.” —Jane Yolen

“A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper.” — E.B. White

“The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.”— Louis L’Amour

“I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately, it strikes every morning at nine o’clock sharp.”— W. Somerset Maugham

“The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day when you are writing a novel you will never be stuck. That is the most valuable thing I can tell you so try to remember it.”― Ernest Hemingway

“A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labours of a spasmodic Hercules.”― Anthony Trollope

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” — Will Durant summarizing Aristotle.

In all seriousness, what do you think ‘success’ looks like for you as a writer? Or for any other writer? And if you have different requirements for ‘success’ than other writers, why is that?

Do you think a writer is only ‘successful’ when they have been published by one of the major publications that keep hoovering up all the smaller indie publishers, or when they win a Pulitzer or Booker Prize? Or is it when they have sold one million copies of a book they’ve written? Or does a writer’s ‘success’ depend on five million book copies sold and a movie deal instead?

It’s time to start defining what ‘success’ looks like for writers differently, especially in the twenty-first century, when what a handful of remote privileged judges and publishers think doesn’t and shouldn’t hold the weight it once did.

Writing ‘success’ doesn’t and won’t ever have a fixed destination or definition, like we try to assume. That’s what makes it beautiful and powerful, even empowering. There is no such thing as ‘success’ for a writer, other than the success that the journey of writing alone can bring them. Again, I know this sounds hokey and clichéd, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

Consider: What happens to the writer who wins a Pulitzer or sells one million copies of a book if they stop writing after receiving that Pulitzer or making those astronomical sales? Do they remain a ‘successful’ writer if they aren’t writing anymore?

All being a ‘successful’ writer entails is one’s devotion to writing regularly, to continually honing and enjoying their craft and writing journey. That’s it. There is no final destination point. Writing continues. And so does each writer’s individual road to ‘success.’

As long as I write every day, I consider myself ‘successful’ because I don’t want my writing journey to only consist of fixed destinations, or even scarier, an endpoint. Even if I get published by a major publisher, sell millions of books, and win prestigious awards, I will still only be a ‘successful’ writer if I continue writing with no final destination in mind.

Again, “The road to success is under construction.” reminds me to keep writing, one word, one sentence, one paragraph, one page at a time. The work won’t ever end because I don’t want it to end, and because I still want to keep building things with my words. And that’s something worth being proud of every day when I sit down to write. I don’t need to wait for anything else to happen to feel successful. I just need to keep writing.

What are your thoughts? How would you define ‘success’ as a writer?

Leave a comment to join this dialogue, then remember to share this post with others so they can join this dialogue too.

Leave a comment

Share

© This work is not available for artificial intelligence (AI) training. All Rights Reserved by K.E. Creighton; Creighton’s Compositions LLC.

Want to express your appreciation for this post and writing prompt?

My writing and I are fueled by loyal readers, caffeine, and kind words, so I appreciate any support you can offer that keeps me writing. Thank you so much!

Buy Me a Coffee

K.E. Creighton's Social Links

Today’s Writing Prompt

Writing Prompt: “I am successful when ...”

Write a journal entry or piece of flash fiction that begins with: “I am successful when...”

Share

Subscribe now to have future posts with writing prompts sent directly to your inbox.

Subscribe now

Join chat threads to discuss today’s post, or to share what you ended up writing based on today’s writing prompt.

You may also enjoy:

Subscribe now

Going through some old drafts of mine, I saw a few pieces that begin with “When I…” and was surprised by the variety of what I found.

What do you come up with when finishing one of the following:

• “When I wrote the letter…”

• “When I pull back the curtains…”

• “When I drank the witch’s brew…”

• “When I heard her say my name…”

• “When I opened the wrapping…”

Share what you come up with in a comment to start a dialogue!

When I Wrote the Letter

When I wrote the letter, it wasn’t meant to be sent. Especially not to him. And especially not by me. To him. To read.

No, I’m no coward. I’m not shy. It’s all a case of mistaken identity. You see. Amorphous expectations and lines. Unforeseen. Consequences. That manifested.

When I wrote the letter, I was only experimenting with the consonants on the page and the shape they take. And his name just so happened to rhyme, fitting the meter of the verse.

All of this is a comically mistimed scheme. Or so I thought. But maybe that’s not really the case.

When I wrote the letter, he was still a stranger to me. And still is. Perhaps no longer.

Now he thinks I’m infatuated, elated, deeply in love. Every time I’m in his mere presence. It’s perverse. I know. That he read the letter. Unintended. An innocent bystander of my word experiment.

When I wrote the letter, I thought myself a muse. Not a scribe or a lover. Until now. Because I avoided structure. I was free. To avoid all forms and cadence. But now the stanzas have changed him. Moved me.

And I can’t escape the meaning. That the words in the letter composed. With the structure of letters, no less. As if he and this newly arranged reality were their own corporal destiny.

[What do you end up with when you finish: “When I wrote the letter…”]

The Shock of Bright Lights

When I pull back the curtains, I see emergency vehicles everywhere. At least six of them, if not more. I can’t really tell with all the flashing lights. They are everywhere up and down the block. Neighbors are scattered everywhere too, and standing in our yard.

I had opened the curtains to see what was going on because I saw flashes of emergency lights across my living room wall as I was dozing off watching the newest true crime documentary. But how I hadn’t noticed the bright light coming from the house three doors down that was fully ablaze, I don’t know.

I run to the bedroom where Greg is asleep. He always goes to bed before me. I am the night owl in the house. And when I reach him, he is fully exposed and possibly already in a deep REM cycle. He must have kicked the comforter off his legs during the night again.

I shake his shoulder roughly and try not to shout, but say a little louder than intended, “Honey, the house down the street is on fire!”

Startled, he bolts upright then stumbles to the floor as he tries to stand up. His foot got tangled in the sheets below his ankles as he attempted to scramble out of the bed, making him fall. But being on the floor proves convenient.

Greg rolls over and retrieves the baseball bat he keeps underneath the bed without skipping a beat and stands up, this time fully upright and much sturdier and more alert.

“Let me at ’em!”

“We aren’t being robbed, hun. It’s the house down the street. It’s on fire! Like, the whole thing is up in flames. I think it’s the James’ house. You know, that new family on the block that we met about a month ago?”

“What, really?” he responds. He relaxes his grip on the bat a bit but his eyes are wide open now.

“Yeah, I think so. We should probably leave and head to my mom’s house in case it spreads, but I wanna go see what happened first and see if they’re going to contain it soon. I think I saw Kylie and Jessica standing out there just now with their families. We can ask them if they know anything.”

Greg puts on some pants and a hoodie and we go outside. The fire’s so huge, there’s ash raining from the sky. The smell of life deteriorating is strong. And I can feel the heat.

Jessica is standing on our front lawn and when I ask her what happened, she says the James’ kid, Bobby, probably burned it down.

“That kid is just weird,” she says. “He is always wearing black and never makes eye contact or talks to anyone.“ He gives her the creeps. I kind of feel the same way about him, if I’m being honest, but I don’t say anything.

Kylie says it was probably faulty wiring. “All our houses are so old for newer models,” she says. And the burning house was just updated a few months back before the family moved in, which means it is highly likely that faulty wiring was the culprit.

“Oh… my… god,” I overhear Kerry say in slow motion from a few feet away.

We all follow her gaze and reflexively mimic her shocked expression.

There are four body bags being wheeled toward the coroner’s vehicle. One is much smaller than the other three. And sure, that’s shocking and heart-wrenching but…

What’s more heart-wrenching and shocking is the fact that only three people had lived inside that house before it started burning down.

[What do you end up with when you finish: “When I pull back the curtains…”]

Witch’s Brew

When I drank the witch’s brew, I involuntarily puckered my lips before spitting it out. The brew was both bitter and tart and tasted a bit like apple cider vinegar when it lingered on my tongue.

I handed back the plastic chalice to Fran and shook my head in disgust. She laughed and put the chalice back on the kitchen island.

“Wow, that bad huh?”

I nodded my head in confirmation.

“Well, it did come from a large pot they’re calling a cauldron,” she pointed to a black pot on the stovetop before continuing, “and they’re calling it ‘witch’s brew’ or ‘bitch’s brew.’ You know, something wildly misogynistic and condescending and inappro—”

“Well, tonight I am not a witch or a bitch or whatever if I have to drink that garbage,” I interrupted.

She laughed again, then said, “Well, it is a frat party. I would expect nothing less garbage-like. Why are we here again?”

“We agreed to a list of college-like things we had to do before we graduate next year so we’re sure to get ‘the full college experience’— your words, not mine. And attending a frat party was on the list. Plus, your super hot lab partner invited you.”

“Right… Well, I’d rather study for my next organic chemistry exam all night than drink whatever you just drank. But we should at least dance while we’re here and show off our costumes. Their d.j. is terrible, but oh well, it’s something to do.” She grabbed my hand and led me into the room where the music was the loudest.

As I started to dance in the smoke-filled room, I began to feel lighter.

After a few minutes, I couldn’t feel my feet or arms and everything around me began to move in slow-mo, including Fran and her mouth.

I couldn’t hear what she was trying to tell me, or anything else. Only the pulse of my own heart beating in my ears.

I caught a glimpse of my hazy image in the mirror across the room and saw a huge joker-like grin on my face. Then I saw… a splash of blood…

[What do you end up with when you finish: “When I drank the witch’s brew…”]

When I Heard Her Say…

When I heard her say my name over the line, I couldn’t believe my ears.

I actually moved the phone away from the ear the speaker had been touching and held it out in my hand in front of me like it was some type of extraterrestrial object.

I stared at the screen.

She was calling from an unknown number and for a split second I thought about ending the call to see if she’d call right back, so I’d know for sure I wasn’t hallucinating.

She said my name again, loud enough to snap me out of my trance.

I scrambled to place the phone next to my ear again, almost dropping it on the floor in the process, and finally responded, “Yes. I’m here.”

“Hey, sweetie. It’s mom. I’d love to see you for dinner tonight if that’s okay with you. Does meeting at Mimi’s at seven-thirty work for you?”

I was speechless.

How could she ask such a thing? And in such a singsongy voice, without a care in the world, as if it were the most natural question to be asking me.

I almost hung up on her again while contemplating how disappointing it was that you can’t slam down a smartphone to really hang up on a person like you used to be able to with the receiver of a rotary phone, which was actually the type of phone I was using the last time I spoke to her. But instead, I only said, “Sure.”

“Great,” she said with a smile in her voice before hanging up on me.

I sat down in the uncomfortable plastic chair at my kitchen table with visions of where she had been and what she had been doing all the years since I’d seen her last, and who she’d been doing them with— after she had announced that she had stage three cancer and decided to leave home with no forwarding address.

[What do you end up with when you finish: “When I heard her say my name…”]

When I Opened the Wrapping

When I opened the wrapping, he sucked in his breath.

Underneath the wrapping was a small black velvet box that seemed to weigh more than it should. When I opened the box, there was a sapphire ring inside it that looked like an antique.

“Look underneath the cushion holding the ring,” he directed.

I did.

Underneath the ring were two keys.

“One key goes to the house next door. I still can’t believe it was up for sale around Christmas. What luck!” He clapped his hands in the air, excited. “And the other goes to your new car outside. It’s that new SUV you’ve wanted for a few months now. It’s the one with the voice-activated GPS and infotainment system.”

When I realized I was staring blankly at the items in my lap not conveying much, I looked up and smiled because I somehow knew that was what I was supposed to do.

He remained on the sofa across from where I was sitting, staring at me without a glimmer of affection in his gaze, like I was a puzzle he was piecing together for his own amusement.

Then when I still didn’t say anything, with palpable annoyance he said, “Listen, Amy, I know you don’t remember anything after your fall last week, but you do want this. You’re lucky to be here. And I’m going to take care of you. My family is going to take care of you.” Which sounded more threatening than reassuring, especially the way he said it.

But how would I know? I couldn’t even remember my own name.

[What do you end up with when you finish: “When I opened the wrapping…”]

Leave a comment to share what you end up writing based on one of these prompts so we can chat about it. And don’t forget to share this post with someone else who might need some creative writing inspiration today too.

Leave a comment

Share

© This work is not available for artificial intelligence (AI) training. All Rights Reserved by K.E. Creighton; Creighton’s Compositions LLC. The above work is fiction. While, as in all fiction, the literary perceptions and insights are based on experience, all names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Want to express your appreciation for this post and writing prompt?

My writing and I are fueled by loyal readers, caffeine, and kind words, so I appreciate any support you can offer that keeps me writing. Thank you so much!

Buy Me a Coffee

K.E. Creighton's Social Links

Subscribe now to have future posts with writing prompts sent directly to your inbox.

Subscribe now

Join chat threads to discuss today’s post, or to share what you ended up writing based on today’s writing prompt.

You may also enjoy:

Subscribe now

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is one of those novels that will resonate with me for a long time, as it will for many others, as it simultaneously inflames reflection, curiosity, empathy, and horror. It might also prove more prescient now than it did when it was first published in 1953, as society continues to grapple with how certain people and groups in power leverage technology like AI to obfuscate reality to subdue the masses and torch the power of books (even if not the literal books themselves), reminding me how Ray Bradbury himself once said: “You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”

[Warning: There are a few plot spoilers in the rest of this review.]

At the beginning of the novel we’re introduced to Guy Montag, a fireman whose job it is to burn books in a society with fireproof houses that views books as dangerous weapons but mindless always-on noisy screen-centered entertainment that induces mass conformity as central to their happiness. From the first dozen or so pages, readers will be able to intuit that Montag is different from his wife and fellow firemen somehow, especially his boss Captain Beatty, though it’s not clear exactly how… until he meets and interacts with Clarisse McClellan, a 17-year-old girl who lives next door and ignites the curiosity he always had but tamped down until they start talking. Once they start talking about nature, happiness, and book burning, Montag starts reflecting on his own life and actions more too, then starts seeing the world and his actions within it in different ways.

After Montag interacts with Clarisse, his character starts shifting more starkly toward nonconformity, especially after he witnesses an elderly woman burn herself alive along with her home library rather than live without its books. It is then that Montag starts explicitly questioning the value of books: “There must be something in books, something we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing.” To which his wife, Mildred, replies with annoyance and frustration, as he is interrupting her ‘happy’ everyday life and routine full of mindless entertainment and noise. And to which Captain Beatty responds with quotes from books, though he twists their meaning to try and demonstrate how dangerous, contradictory, confusing, and nonsensical books are, and how they ultimately lead to ‘insanity.’ Beatty says, “A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man’s mind. Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man?” But Montag can’t shake his growing curiosity.

As the novel unfolds we learn that Montag had been curious about books and their significance for at least a year once we discover that he’s been hiding some books inside his own house and that he’s been hanging onto a small piece of paper with contact information for a former English professor he met in a park the previous year. He then reconnects with the English professor, Faber, who acts as Montag’s new mentor, helping Montag understand the significance and value of books in a dystopic world, though Faber claims that he is himself a coward. Faber does, however, empower Montag to rebel against censorship and aids Montag’s awakening, highlighting the importance of deep thought over superficial entertainment. And from that point on, Montag journeys down a new and uncertain path, which is as dangerous as it is exhilarating.

There are plenty of themes to highlight and discuss in this novel, which include censorship, technology, and mass media, and how they all work together to promote pervasive apathy (which is misconstrued as happiness in the novel) to dehumanize and control the population, promoting and instituting artificial relationships and superficial ‘knowledge’ over deeper human connections and understanding. The novel also highlights the power of literature and intellectual freedom and how essential books (as well as the memory of what they hold) are to the survival of humanity.

Montag’s journey represents the uncomfortable yet enlightening shift from being a passive tool of the state to an active participant in preserving knowledge and fighting against a system that works to control people. There are also tons of images and symbols for lit nerds to unpack, which include fire (destruction/purification), the hearth and salamander (home/firemen), the phoenix (rebirth), the sieve and sand (mind/knowledge), and mirrors (self-awareness).

More than anything, I enjoyed following the unraveling mystery of why books were being burned and who was working for and against such state-mandated efforts alongside Montag. While this novel is chock full of similes, metaphors, irony, imagery, literary motifs, paradoxes, symbolism, etc., I appreciated how it was still relatable (especially in 2026) and easy to follow, which also makes it an excellent novel for any school classroom to devour, digest, then discuss. Fahrenheit 451 is officially now one of my favorite classic novels of all time.

Here are a few additional notable quotes from the novel:

“We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?”

“‘The books are to remind us what asses and fools we are. They’re Caeser’s praetorian guard, whispering as the parade roars down the avenue, “Remember, Caeser, thou art mortal.” Most of us can’t rush around, talking to everyone, know all the cities of the world, we haven’t time, money or that many friends. The things you’re looking for, Montag, are in the world, but the only way the average chap will ever see ninety-nine per cent of them is in a book. Don’t ask for guarantees. And don’t look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were headed for shore.’”

“With school turning out more runners, jumpers, racers, tinkerers, grabbers, snatchers, fliers, and swimmers instead of examiners, critics, knowers, and imaginative creators, the word ‘intellectual,’ of course, became the swear word it deserved to be.”

“The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.”

“But you can’t make people listen. They have to come round in their own time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up around them.”

“‘If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the government is inefficient, top-heavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it. Peace, Montag. Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving. And they’ll be happy, because facts of that sort don’t change.’”

“‘I don’t talk things, sir. I talk the meaning of things.’”

“See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask for no guarantees, ask for no security.”

Have you read this book yet, or plan to read it soon? Leave a comment to start a discussion or tell us what we should read next. And don’t forget to subscribe to receive future book reviews in your inbox, along with other engaging posts.

Leave a comment

Share

© This work is not available for artificial intelligence (AI) training. All Rights Reserved by K.E. Creighton; Creighton’s Compositions LLC.

Want to express your appreciation for this post and writing prompt?

My writing and I are fueled by loyal readers, caffeine, and kind words, so I appreciate any support you can offer that keeps me writing. Thank you so much!

Buy Me a Coffee

K.E. Creighton's Social Links

Today’s Writing Prompt

Writing Prompt: Burning

Write a scene in which someone is burning something. Or write about the last time you burned something and why.

Writing Tip

Use the first-person perspective to make what you write more personal and intense.

Share

Subscribe now to have future posts with writing prompts sent directly to your inbox.

Subscribe now

Join chat threads to discuss today’s post, or to share what you ended up writing based on today’s writing prompt.

You may also enjoy:

Subscribe now

What words of wisdom would you add to this list for your fellow readers and writers? Leave a comment to join this dialogue, and don’t forget to share this post with others so they can feel inspired too!

Leave a comment

Share

Want to express your appreciation for this particular post?

My writing and I are fueled by loyal readers, caffeine, and kind words, so I appreciate any support you can offer that keeps me writing. Thank you so much!

Buy Me a Coffee

Subscribe now

K.E. Creighton's Social Links

© This work is not available for artificial intelligence (AI) training. All Rights Reserved by K.E. Creighton; Creighton’s Compositions LLC.

Today’s Writing Prompt

Writing Prompt: Motivated

Write a scene in which someone is motivated to do something.

Writing Tip

Before you start writing, consider: Who is motivated in this scene, and by whom or what? And what are they motivated to do?

Share

Subscribe now to have future posts with writing prompts sent directly to your inbox.

Subscribe now

Join chat threads to discuss today’s post, or to share what you ended up writing based on today’s writing prompt.

You may also enjoy:

Subscribe now

Read more

Read more

Read more

Read more

Read more

Read more

Read more

Read more

Read more

Read more

Read more

Read more

Read more

Read more

Read more